The one-footed Paralympics funnyman turns his TV gaze on current affairs

Adam Hills is the comedian with one foot whom David and Samantha Cameron like to watch while in bed. It’s an image that the friendly Australian cannot shake from his mind, that of the Prime Minister and his wife snuggling up under the duvet at 10 Downing Street to watch him discuss with another disabled man whether or not they take off their prosthetics to have sex.

“David Cameron told Ade Adepitan [the television presenter and former Paralympian] that was one of his favourite bits of the show. I thought: 'Hang on, David Cameron is watching Channel 4?’ Good Lord, that’s quite an achievement.”

Hills was the unexpected hit of the station’s Paralympics coverage, hosting comedy show The Last Leg, a late-night look at the previous day’s action. In less capable hands, The Last Leg could have seemed tawdry and in poor taste. One of the most popular bits was a segment entitled “Is it OK?”, in which viewers could ring in with questions that they’d previously been worried about asking, such as: “Do you have sex?” and “Do the blind see in their dreams?”. But under the sunny stewardship of Hills, it became must-watch television, a refreshing change from the spiky, politically incorrect comedy that has become synonymous with Channel 4.

The Paralympics may be long gone, but the popularity of Hills lives on. So beloved was The Last Leg that it has been brought back to our screens on Friday nights, the sporting events replaced with current affairs. So far he has had guests including Prof Brian Cox, actors Idris Elba and Rafe Spall on the new series. But the man he really wants is Mr Cameron, if only to ask him: “Is it OK to make cuts to disability living allowances just months after the success of the Paralympics?”

“That event did a huge amount for public perceptions of disability, and I don’t think that he [Cameron] made token gestures with his praise. But it is just disappointing to achieve so much and then a few months later take so many steps back.”

Tall and tanned, Hills, who is married to an opera singer and has a young daughter, has the easy looks of an American TV star. He’s a man for whom the word “hunky” was surely invented. In Australia, where he hosts a talk show, he is as famous as Graham Norton or Jonathan Ross, but not a tenth as crude.

He was born 42 years ago in Sydney, minus a right foot. He tells me that he has “an ankle joint and then a stump, and when I was born I had two toes on top of that which I could move, though they kept getting knocked around.

“When I was about 13 or 14, the doctors said I could have them removed, but I was insistent on hanging on to them. It was very much, 'This is my body, and I’m keeping it my way.’ And then, when I turned 18, they said, 'Are you sure?’, and I said, 'Actually, they’re starting to get annoying now, so shall we just get rid of them?’”

He laughs heartily. He has never seen his disability as such. “Oh God, no. No, no, no! There’s a British swimmer called Liz Johnson who has cerebral palsy, and she says: 'Some people were born with brown hair, some with blonde, and some with big noses. Well, I was born with cerebral palsy.’ And I think that’s very much the way I, and most people with disabilities, look at it.”

When he was a little boy, his parents refused to treat him differently from his brother, enrolling him in gymnastics classes when he was four. “And I’m actually all right at it,” he says. “I can bust out a cartwheel.”

Hills has been in comedy for over 20 years. He got into it while studying journalism in Australia, when he would do open-mic nights. An early experience put him off ever mentioning his disability. “I’d done two gigs back to back and I only had 15 minutes’ worth of material, and I found myself saying: 'Errrm… uhhhh… I’ve got an artificial foot.’

“The older comics said: 'You’re not old enough to talk about your foot yet. Wait until you build up your comic chops, prove yourself as a comedian first, work out how to be funny, and then when you have got that down pat you can talk about your foot.’ I was 19 and I thought 'Ahhhh, whatever you say.’ ”

It was another 13 years before the foot would come up in his routine again. He had been nominated for the Perrier Award, the most esteemed comedy prize at the Edinburgh Festival. “I thought: 'That’s proof that I’ve built up my comic chops.’ But I knew that there had to be a reason to talk about it, otherwise it would be a bit like a stranger sitting on a train telling you they had a really tough childhood.”

In one of his routines, he riffs on his experiences in airports just after September 11, when he’d set off metal detectors and security staff wouldn’t know what to do with him. “I’d explain that I had an artificial foot and they’d be so scared of offending me that they’d say, 'OK, sir, you go through.’ And I’d be like: 'No, no, check! I could have a knife in there!’ ”

Hills, who spends half of the year in the UK and the other half in Australia, is quite the nicest comedian out there at the moment. He doesn’t ascribe to the belief that you have to be offensive to be funny. “Actually, it’s harder but ultimately more satisfying to make people laugh without being nasty. When I first came to Britain in 1997, there were a lot of angry comedians who had nowhere to channel that anger because New Labour had just come in. Clearly they became angry towards them later, but at the time it was quite weird because they would all just be standing around on stage with nothing to attack.”

Strangely, he doesn’t have anything against the famously inflammatory Frankie Boyle. “My view of him is clouded because back when we used to do the comedy clubs we would occasionally share a flat, and we got on like a house on fire. We’d get up in the morning, cook breakfast, and then spend the day together, maybe seeing a movie. We’d bond and talk about our family and the universe and spirituality. He’d probably hate that I am telling you this.”

Surprising as the revelation is, if anybody could make Frankie Boyle seem nice then it is Hills. He once received a review praising his celebratory humour. “I thought: 'Oh yeah, I suppose that’s what I do.’ And from then on I made a conscious decision to put a positive slant on everything. Most of the time, every joke can have a positive slant.

“I had a gag about how I hate Americans because they name their children after personality traits that they hope they are going to grow up with, like Faith and Charity. Then one day I realised I could say that I loved Americans because of this, and it would still be exactly the same joke.”

He pauses and looks down at his prosthetic. “I don’t know. Maybe it comes from having one foot and believing that you can celebrate life or you can mock it. It’s like that Dr Seuss quote: why fit in when you were born to stand out?”